


baby, if only you could see heartstrings

by enbymegumi



Series: i dare you write a reylo story [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo is a Mess, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Rey Needs A Hug, Soft Ben Solo, Unresolved Romantic Tension, and a break, and she is bored of being quarantined, author desperately needs caffeine, uwu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23186239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enbymegumi/pseuds/enbymegumi
Summary: "Sometimes," he goes on, and now he's the one babbling, driven by pure unadulterated emotion. He holds her tighter to him, even when his voice runs out and keeps on breaking. "Sometimes I hate that I can't go back to my mother and pretend everything's okay, and whenever the bond lets us lay next to each other at night, I wish I could just be Ben for you."Suddenly she's looking at him like a switch had been flipped. Her eyes are no longer full of tears, no longer sad and wistful, replaced with something entirely different. Stronger. Fiercer. Hungrier. Darting up and down his face. He's too busy trying to place it, too engulfed in the feeling of her arms to realise that their connection is fraying."Sometimes I hate that your light is so strong it shines through every bad thing I've ever done. Sometimes it makes me wish I could go back to being who I used to be-""Sometimes," Rey growls under her breath. "You could just shut up and kiss me."---once again this is an extended scene from TSARITO, my main fic, but also inspired by a prompt i was given on instagram.decided to combine it. had a breakdown. bon appetit.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Leia Organa & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: i dare you write a reylo story [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658746
Comments: 3
Kudos: 46





	baby, if only you could see heartstrings

**Author's Note:**

> prompt given by marion from ig (thanks pal!): When he (ben) realises that being evil isn't all that great and all he wants is to kiss Rey and be a Mamas boiiii
> 
> \---
> 
> snippet of TSARITO that i chose to take and adapt:
> 
> “How many more of us have to die for you to come back?” she’d sobbed angrily, pounding a fist on his chest. “To come home?”
> 
> He hadn’t known what to say. So he pulled her in and held her close, rubbing circles in her back, whispering hushed apologies into her hair without knowing exactly what he was sorry for. It took all his might to fight back his own tears.
> 
> \---
> 
> enjoy the angst children

Kylo senses it in the middle of one of his meetings. a tremor in the force, something akin to a star that he didn't know had been shining in him, flickering for a split second.  
  
It hurts.  
  
It hurts a lot.  
  
He tries very hard not to think about how he associates the little star with a presence he calls "Mom," but very spectacularly fails.  
  
His head starts to throb with the strange, unbidden pain as he violently excuses himself from the room, sweeping past a bewildered Hux and straight to his quarters.  
  
He slams the blast door shut behind him and lays his forehead against it, breathing heavily.  
  
_She's not..._ He can't bring himself to say the words or calm down. _She can't be..._  
  
Then why does it hurt so much?  
  
He's on the brink of squeezing his eyes shut in pathetic denial, when the bond slides cautiously open.  
  
His first instinct is to stifle a scoff. It's almost as if she's checking in on him. It's almost as if she cares.  
  
As if he's a kriffing child.  
  
His next instinct is to whip around and demand what has happened to his m- to General Organa. It wouldn't a fair war if the leader of the Resistance was... indisposed.  
  
So that's what he does.  
  
But he gets as far as turning around, because as soon as his gaze falls on Rey, his words die on his lips.  
  
She's curled up across the room from him, barefoot, hugging her knees to her chest, her hair flowing in waves over her shoulders. The expression on her face very much matches the fear and apprehension radiating off his own presence.  
  
"What was that?" he asks quietly instead.  
  
Rey looks up at him, and she's just _so tired._ "So you felt it too?"  
  
"Yes," he admits. "Is M- is she...?"  
  
"No," Rey says quickly. "She isn't... gone. If that's what you're asking."  
  
"It was," he agrees, and before he can stop himself, "That's good."  
  
"She had an accident," Rey mutters, fiddling with her hair. He's come to notice it's something she does whenever she's particularly agitated. "One of our smaller transports exploded and she-" Rey pauses, briefly overcome. "She tried to contain it."  
  
"Oh," Kylo says. His insides churn with conflict, and the tide of it gets higher and higher, threatening to overflow.  
  
What the hell was Organa thinking? She could have gotten seriously hurt, she could have died. Does she not know that her little Resistance needs her? Does she not know that the war sings for her Skywalker blood? Does she not know that she'd be leaving behind her one and only son in this cursed life? She'd done it before countless times when he was a child, she doesn't get to do it again. Especially not like this.  
  
He needs her.  
  
He needs his goddamn mother.  
  
_Stupid, stupid old woman._  
  
He thinks it with all the heartbreak and anguish and _love,_ painfully pent up inside him, but it seems he should have thought better about putting a shield around his mind.  
  
The last sliver of thought escapes through the cracks and before he realises what had happened, Rey is on her feet, eyes blazing, hair whipping around her face, even in the vaccum of his quarters, and looking every bit a beautiful menace.  
  
"Stupid old woman?" she advances on him, shaking with rage. _"Stupid old woman?"_  
  
"I-" Kylo starts, but Rey flicks her wrist and he feels himself being propelled backwards and slammed into something unseen and rough against his back.  
  
He knows better than to resist.  
  
"Your mother almost died today!" Rey all but shouts. "And you call her names?"  
  
She gets in his face, and he feels his grief is shared, halved with hers as her tears finally start to fall from her red rimmed eyes. It breaks his kriffing heart, and this is the only type of pain he cannot siphon up as strength.  
  
So he lets it hurt. He lets her shout.  
  
"How many more of us have to die for you to come back?" Rey gasps, angrily, thumping a fist against his chest. "To come home?"  
  
"Rey-"  
  
She ignores him, curling her fingers into the front of his tunic, babbling and completely beside herself, "You are a terrible, stubborn, heartless, ungrateful-"  
  
She chokes on a sob. Kylo snares the chance - he pulls her in and wraps his arms tightly around her. He doesn't relent when she attempts, weakly, half-heartedly, to wrench herself away from him.  
  
"I'm sorry," he whispers into her hair, and isn't half surprised to find his own face wet with tears. "Don't go. I'm sorry."  
  
He rubs gentle circles into her back, like he'd known to do this forever, and feeds her his true emotions about his mother, bit by bit, through the bond. Memories, of himself as a child, squealing with delight from the warmth of his mother's embrace, a rarity in the nursedroid upbringings and caf as bitter as his darkness.  
  
He shows her as much as he can take, until Rey's sniffles diminish into the odd hiccup, until the tautness of her muscles loosen and she melts under his touch.  
  
"I'm sorry, too," He hears her mumble into his tear-stained tunic, her arms coming up to hug his middle, dragging her palm up and down his spine. "I'm sorry I called you all those names-"  
  
"It's okay."  
  
"No, it's not," Rey withdraws slightly and glares up at him, a soft crease forming between her eyebrows. "I misunderstood your-"  
  
"You know how I am," Kylo shakes his head, his thumb ghosting the line of her jaw. "It's not easy to show that I'm... scared. To show that I care for someone who's never really cared about me."  
  
"She does care, Ben," Rey tells him sternly. "She loves you-"  
  
"Not enough to show it, apparently," he snaps, but instantly regrets it when Rey's face falls.  
  
Now he's certain she'll tear herself from his arms, that she'll sever the connection and vanish, like she always does in the end. (He wouldn't blame her.)  
  
Instead she just looks at him, and then folds herself back against his chest, pressing her cheek to where his heart is racing inside him. It feels like a closing door to something warm and welcome, something stemming the flow of his unstable bout of emotions, something grounding him to reality like nothing else ever had.  
  
It feels like a home.  
  
"She wants another chance to be your mother," Rey whispers. "If you'll let her."  
  
"But will she let me-" His voice breaks.  
  
Rey looks him straight in the eye, and her gaze runs deep into what seems to be his very core. "If _I_ could see you for who you really are, how can she not? She's your family."  
  
"So are you." The words leave his lips as quickly and as instinctively as a thought forming, and contrary to all the soft things he has forbidden himself to say, he doesn't find himself wanting to take that back. Ever.  
  
"Sometimes," he goes on, and now he's the one babbling, driven by pure unadulterated emotion. He holds her tighter to him, even when his voice runs out and keeps on breaking. "Sometimes I hate that I can't go back to my mother and pretend everything's okay, and whenever the bond lets us lay next to each other at night, I wish I could just be _Ben_ for you."  
  
Suddenly she's looking at him like a switch had been flipped. Her eyes are no longer full of tears, no longer sad and wistful, replaced with something entirely different. Stronger. Fiercer. Hungrier. Darting up and down his face. He's too busy trying to place it, too engulfed in the feeling of her arms to realise that their connection is fraying.  
  
"Sometimes I hate that your light is so strong it shines through every bad thing I've ever done. Sometimes it makes me wish I could go back to being who I used to be-"  
  
"Sometimes," Rey growls under her breath. "You could just shut up and kiss me."

Her heady suggestion hits him in a whirlwind of confusion, then alarm, then realisation.

_Oh._

And just when his brain has discerned exactly what she wants him to do, he blinks.  
  
Which was a mistake.  
  
One moment he's staring at her, desire filling him like water in a well, the next his arms close in on empty air. The last thing he sees, he could've sworn, was Rey leaning up towards him, eyes at half mast, lips parting as they rise to meet his, before the sound of the _Steadfast's_ engines propelling through space rushes back into his ears.

He finds himself pressed up against the surface of a wall in his own quarters, breathing heavily, utterly alone, and he takes a moment to get himself together.

It's impossible. She's impossible. Unpredictable. Irresistible, and she _knows it._

An afterthought runs through his mind, too little too late, even though he knows she won't hear him, even though he knows he's far from deserving of it.  
  
_I want that too, sweetheart._

_I want you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> scream at me @shruggyben on tumblr or @cosmicowlcosplay on ig!!


End file.
